Unspoilt
by redcherryamber
Summary: Rude is supposed to meet Chelsea under a tree in a Sector Eight park, tonight, in an unspoilt world. Chelsea's POV. Rude/Chelsea


**This one's because I watched the Before Crisis episode where Rude loses Chelsea and it made me want to cry. **

**I took parts of the conversation from scripts on Dark Angel's excellent and invaluable "Gunshot Romance" site. **

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><p><strong>Unspoilt<strong>

Look at that – it's snowing. Karl once told me that it never snows on the plate – not with all the pollution from the reactors. "Not even the weather is normal anymore," he tells anyone who'll listen. Everything he says is delivered as though he were talking to a packed auditorium, even when it's just the two of us. "That's why we have to stop them - to bring back normal weather. It's all about balance. The planet is out of balance, because of the Shinra, and we have to reset the scales. That's what we're fighting for – equilibrium!"

It wasn't Karl who made me interested in saving the planet – I decided in my teens that things couldn't continue as they were. It seemed clear from all I read that the use of mako energy was having a detrimental effect – that, at least around the reactors, the land was dying. I suppose you could say it was Karl who radicalised me – Karl – one of Fuhito's most loyal disciples - whose passionate rhetoric convinced me to join Avalanche.

Karl is fond of making speeches.

The snow simplifies everything as it conceals. It reveals forms as their basic outlines even while obscuring them: a natural paradox.

There was a time when things were just simple – not simple in this complicated way.

Rude is _not_ fond of making speeches. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with him.

I hide among the fir trees and the darkness, and watch Rude waiting. West Park, like the rest of the plate, is slowly filling with snow. Underneath the plate, of course, there is nothing to soften contours and blur edges like this. Life is 'hard and uncompromising'. Karl has rammed this point home a hundred times, but I'm no longer seeing Karl, and I no longer care what he has to say.

For all his size and his strength, Rude does nothing with Karl's sledgehammer certainty. Not with me, at least. He speaks hesitantly, when he speaks at all, but I never tire of waiting for his words. When we sleep together Rude has a gentleness that Karl never had. He's almost _too_ gentle, until he's sure that he's not going to hurt me – until he lets himself believe that he is what I want – and then – then he holds nothing back.

I'm going to miss that.

Rude _is_ what I want. Or, the part of him I know_ - _that's what I want. And I want to believe that that part is the real Rude. But nothing's straightforward anymore – and Rude, like me, accommodates other realities.

Rude's Turk reality is one I try not to think about, and can't avoid. It's why they gave me the mission, after all.

I watch him blowing into his gloved hands, fidgeting and pacing, against his nature, because he really doesn't like the cold. I want to go to him and hold him – make him warm. When he holds me I feel secure.

I'm going to miss that, too.

In the bar, Rude said that he had something to tell me, today, here – under that illuminated tree. My heart sank instead of leaping, and my first thought was - _does he know?_

I think he knows. He said some things – trivial sounding things, about being late – called me out on a social lie, and made me confess that I'd been waiting for half an hour. But it wasn't about that. He said I didn't have to lie to him. He said it wouldn't change the way he felt. He meant it – I could tell. He doesn't say much, but what he says is what he means.

In a better world – a less complicated world – he might have something to _ask_ me in a snowy park beneath a glowing tree that is supposed to symbolise hope and undying love. In a world like that I wouldn't have to be afraid of what the question might be.

When he first mentioned visiting the park, Rude said that hope _and _undying love was a lot of symbolism for one small tree to bear, and he smiled. Karl was full of passion for the cause, and energetic, and confident, but he almost never made me laugh. Rude's humour is surprising, and appears suddenly, and makes me laugh often.

I'm going to miss that most of all.

Here's the Turk with the shotgun, who told me her name is Cassie. She looks a little bit like me, but she's taller, and her hair is a lighter shade of brown. She killed three members of my cell: Ryan, Matty and Sam. But their deaths are on my conscience more than hers. I am a traitor – they would have killed me, and she saved my life. Nothing's simple anymore.

When I joined Avalanche – then things seemed simple. I was as impatient for change as a child on Midwinter's Eve fretting for morning. I thought we were going to save the world in a matter of months – years at most. We spoke of the necessity of violence – fighting fire with fire – confronting the enemy in terms they would understand. Deaths would be inevitable but necessary sacrifices to the greater good.

Ryan, Matty and Sam believed that too – died believing it. I don't believe it anymore. We had no idea what we were talking about.

In the silence the snow brings I can hear Cassie's words as she tells Rude that I'm not coming. I can't see her face, but I can hear the pity, and I know that Rude will hate it.

I can see Rude's face, and I wish I couldn't. He doesn't show much emotion – not in his expression – but the way he goes still – the way he turns his head as though he's listening for something just out of earshot – those things break my heart.

"She said we can't be together, right?" I hear him say, and his voice is steady, but I've never heard that flat tone before – it doesn't sound like Rude. Cassie is trying to help, but she doesn't know him well enough, and her sympathy is painful. "Go after her!" she encourages, and Rude looks at her.

"She's already given her answer," Rude says.

Cassie frowns at his resignation. "And you're okay with that?"

"Yeah," he says, and I can see he means no, no - he's not okay at all, but he was prepared – he _knew_ – he understands why. He starts to walk away and takes no notice when she calls his name. It's as if she's calling in my place – a high, desperate note – the sound my mind is making.

Then there's Reno, and I'm glad of that. Rude talks a lot – for Rude – about Reno. In the bar he would tell me stories – _Reno says… Reno thinks… There was this time when Reno…_

Reno knows him in a way Cassie doesn't.

Reno's nervous, but hiding it so well that if Rude hadn't told me so much about him, I wouldn't have seen it. His tone is all light banter, but his eyes say something else. "Hey – what's wrong, partner? You're not looking so good." There's a pause, and I can see Reno considering before he adds, "Sentimentalist."

Rude looks at him and I can't see his face anymore, but I hear something that's almost relief in his tone as he tells Reno to shut up. There's no heat in it, and Reno is relieved, too.

Overdoing it a shade, Reno hugs himself and acts a shiver. "Brrr, it's cold out here! What the hell are we doing out on a night like this? Fuckin' _snowing_!"

"Yeah," says Rude, and it's the last word I hear him say.

"C'mon - let's go home," says Reno. Rude follows, and I watch him go.

Cassie hangs around for a moment, and I'm almost tempted to call out to her – but I don't. I wait until the park is empty before I leave my hiding place and walk towards the tree.

I look at the lights, and I think about how ridiculous the whole idea of the tree is – the sentimental notions of undying love and simple hope – the irony of Shin-Ra lighting up a tree with mako energy, when they're the ones spoiling the world and killing all the trees.

But this tree is still beautiful. Does that mean anything?

Rude brought me red carnations, and he is a man who spills blood, the same red, for a living, but I fell in love with him, against reason, and in spite of my orders.

I first fell in love with him when he stumbled over his words trying to tell me how much he liked the colour of this green dress – and then stopped, and took a breath, and said simply, "You look beautiful."

I fell in love with him all over again when he told me that it was the flower-seller who forced him to buy the carnations. For a Turk, he's a terrible liar.

Things should be simple again now. I can go back to Avalanche because the only people who witnessed my treachery are dead. But I don't think I'll go back. Shin-Ra is still the enemy, but there must be other ways to fight – ways that don't involve killing.

I stand in the thickly falling snow, and try to figure out how I feel.

It's like this: say you've lost something, and you can see it there, buried under a heap of snow. You can tell, by the shape, that it's what you're looking for. So you start to dig – you use your hands in spite of the cold, because you have nothing else, and this thing that you've lost matters _so much_… You dig, and you uncover only more snow, and, deeper, more snow and more snow, turning to water in your hands.

Perhaps it's better not to dig. Leave the snow undisturbed, and believe that hidden safely underneath is everything you ever wanted. Hope. Undying love.

Tonight – in another life – in an unspoilt world – some version of myself – an identical-looking Chelsea in this same green dress that he likes so much – is running to meet a Rude who doesn't work for Shin-Ra, because in that reality there _is_ no Shin-Ra. She has never seen a mako reactor, or the dead land that surrounds it. She runs because it's snowing and Rude's not good in the cold, and she wants to make him warm. She runs for joy, because he's got something to _ask_ her, and she already knows – and _he _already knows – that the answer to his question is simple.

The answer to his question is yes.


End file.
